A multidisciplinary capstone teaching model-an integrated, multilevel, intradisciplinary engineering design approach

This paper presents the design of a curricular program that meets the educational needs of an interdisciplinary student cohort (e.g. where many are not majoring in any engineering discipline) through courses with intradisciplinary involvement between different stages in the instructional sequence. It proposes a curricular paradigm which allows students to work in groups on a single, large, real-world problem over multiple terms. Students from senior level courses act as the group leaders/mentors for student groups from lower level courses. This teaching method will provide the student with an engineering design experience more consistent with his/her eventual real-world experience than more traditional curricular paradigms have allowed